Here Comes the Country Glam

ENLARGE

Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood during the 2012 Country Music Awards.
Katherine Bomboy-Thornton/Associated Press

By

Barry Mazor

Nov. 4, 2013 5:32 p.m. ET

Nashville, Tenn.

Wednesday night, ABC will broadcast the 47th edition of the Country Music Association's annual awards show. With a dollop of the down home and a considerably larger serving of glitz, the razzle-dazzle parade of country stars competes with and sometimes surpasses in viewership both the Grammy Awards and American Music Awards. Pegged as "Country's Night to Shine," its centrality in the field makes it an annual cause for excited praise, mocking and arguments from the music's fans and practitioners alike. The annual debates often have more to do with why the show is presented as it is and who's been included—established or fresher acts, traditionalist or more pop performers, country stalwarts or genre tourists—than with winners and losers.

"It's about balance," Robert Deaton, the CMA Awards' executive producer for the past seven years, explained in a recent interview. "We've got to represent all of country music, not just any one faction, and the landscape of country music is broad. I equate today to the era"—the mid-1960s—"when Eddy Arnold was having huge hit records, and they had strings on them, but you also had Merle Haggard. What country music 'is' has always been broad."

The range of places country music can be encountered in 2013—from limited-playlist "mainstream" country radio to varied, more adventurous specialized online outlets—presents a lively but fractured picture of "country" in totality. But in the interest of broad appeal, the show's creators are focusing more than previously, not less, on booking the short-list of familiar singles-chart stars, singing their current hits. Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift and Luke Bryan will be much in evidence again, as they were last year—presold attractions who, according to Mr. Deaton, far outflank lesser-known acts in the ratings, as do recognized hits rather than newer songs. He projects that there will be four new song introductions out of 18 or 19 numbers on the show—if with some twists.

"Every show, including ours, exists in its own moment in time," Mr. Deaton said. "For this show, I'm putting together interesting collaborations and events that will be unique to this one night: Taylor Swift is going to perform with Vince Gill and Allison Krauss; Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line are going to perform together, which has never been seen before; and yes, George Strait and Alan Jackson will pay tribute to George Jones."

While classic "legacy" country stars rarely appear on today's CMA Awards as more than references or walk-ons, recent editions have included tribute medleys to Willie Nelson, Barbara Mandrell and Glen Campbell by contemporary headliners, which are intended to connect the dots for younger audiences. Mr. Deaton, who grew up on the traditional country of Bill Anderson and Buck Owens, agrees that salutes by others alone can seem inadequate.

"I was putting together a Kenny Rogers tribute this year; he's just gone into the Country Music Hall of Fame and he's getting the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award from the CMA. I realized that what the audience would really love, and I would, too, was to see Kenny sing. And so he'll be doing 'Islands in the Stream' with Jennifer Nettles during the salute."

For some hardcore country aficionados, the broadcast's regular pairing of country singers with "outside" pop or rock artists is a sore point, reflecting, perhaps, television's assumption that the genre isn't strong enough to attract broader audiences without that crutch. Mr. Deaton responds: "I've heard that said, too, that it shows we have an inferiority complex—but I couldn't disagree more. We should not be off on a little island by ourselves, and that has nothing to do with thinking that we're not cool enough—we are. Our artists are selling the most tickets, the most records. We're not trying to shoehorn anybody in; those combinations have to be organic." (An example of what he's suggesting: The Zac Brown Band and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters have been working on new music together, which they'll present on the air.)

The pairing of Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood as CMA Awards hosts began as another balancing-act effort to represent different country styles, but there proved to be chemistry there, especially in working up and performing the show's comic monologues; this will be their sixth outing together.

"Carrie and I had toured together and were good friends," Mr. Paisley noted in a separate interview, "but we really lucked out. You always hear 'They'll be great together,' but Anne Hathaway and James Franco are both fine artists and together it was like mustard and gin." That's the sort of just-edgy-enough comment the show's audience expects from Mr. Paisley by now. That occasionally leads to tensions.

"In this society," Mr. Paisley said, "the worse you do as a performer the more press you get, so everybody wants to control that. Some managers go to the dress rehearsal to see what we're saying about their artists, and we've had a couple basically say 'You can't say that.' That's just managers doing their jobs, but we're trying to do ours; you can't let the person that you're roasting have a say about your jokes. My rule is, we don't eat our own—but there's fair game, looking at current events."

One charge that may have had its day is that the show plays it "prime-time safe." Country songs with more pointed, outspoken lyrics have made marks this year, some by Mr. Paisley himself, and he's expected to sing one of those meatier numbers, even if he jokes about them first. Breakout newcomer Kacey Musgraves, nominated for five awards, will be featured performing her gutsy pro-lifestyle-choice anthem, "Follow Your Arrow," on the show.

"Shouldn't we give the artist the platform to make musical statements sometimes?" Mr. Deaton said. "There was probably a meeting with Loretta Lynn and somebody said 'You can never put out this song called "The Pill,"' and she got it done anyway, which made her who she is—and a legend. Playing safe is not our priority; Kacey is a true artist, and it's our responsibility to support that artistry."

Mr. Mazor, based in Nashville, writes about country and roots music for the Journal.

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